Atheists and Humanists: Contribution to Society

Lord Bishop of Oxford Excerpts

Thursday 25th July 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Harries of Pentregarth]

My Lords, I, too, am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Harrison, for an opportunity to speak in this debate and I put my name down to speak in an entirely positive manner. I believe that we should recognise and rejoice in what is good, wherever it comes from. I warmly welcome the contribution that humanists have made to our society. In its modern sense, I take it that the word humanism refers to a set of values focused on the well-being and flourishing of human beings without recourse to any kind of metaphysical foundation or goal. Humanists may be atheist or agnostic but their value system stands on its own. This is best described as secular humanism, which I take is what we are focused on in this debate. It can be distinguished from Christian humanism, which is grounded in a religious world view, although it shares many of the values of secular humanism.

The distinctive contribution of secular humanism to our society since the 19th century can, in general terms, be summed up in one sentence: it has opposed religious dogmatism when that dogmatism was seen to be blocking progressive social changes that we now all take for granted. Humanists can be found supporting all the great causes of the past 200 years from the anti-slavery movement to votes for women, as often as not working alongside Christians. So I warmly welcome that contribution. However, I have two questions to ask, which I do so as genuine questions, not in a polemical spirit. First, where do the values of secular humanism come from? Secondly, what is going to sustain them in the future?

The Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor’s massive book, A Secular Age, addresses the first question. He argues against all “subtraction stories”, as he calls them, according to which modernity sees itself as having sloughed off or liberated itself from certain limiting beliefs. Instead, he argues that what we mean by a secular age, in which for the first time a self-sufficient humanism has become a widely available option, is the product of a long historical development which he traces back to the medieval age when new religious orders were founded specifically to live and work in cities. He continues the story through the Reformation, with its emphasis on the value of the lay vocation and lay work, and the development of secular life through to our own times. In short, what we value today in a secular humanist view of the world is an achievement brought about by a long process of predominantly Christian history. Secular humanist values did not simply come from nowhere.

The noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker, mentioned George Eliot and Thomas Hardy, two novelists I hugely admire. George Eliot probably had a greater range of depth and sympathy than any other writer in the English language, yet until well into adult life, both were deeply devout and serious Christians. They lost their Christian faith but they kept their Christian values, or they kept values which they no longer regarded as specifically Christian. However, those values had been formed by some process. I make this point not to take any particular credit for the Christian church, whose record is of course mixed, but in order to sharpen up my next question: if these values are the product of a long, substantially Christian history, what will sustain them into the future? The Nobel prize-winning poet, Seamus Heaney, has said that, “Some kind of metaphysics has disappeared from the common life. I think we are running on an unconscious that is informed by religious values, but I think my youngster’s youngsters won’t have that”. If that is true, what can create, inspire, sustain and strengthen a durable moral consensus into the future? It is a genuine question to which for so many there is no clear or obvious answer, so it was very good in particular to hear the noble Lord, Lord Layard, address it directly with a degree of urgency and seriousness.

This leads on to my final point. Michael Sandel, the Harvard professor and Reith lecturer, has argued that for 30 years or more, our society has been dominated by a combination of social and market liberalism. In short, the value of free choice has been allowed to override and ignore all other values. In a series of brilliant examples, he shows that this is unsustainable and that our deepest instincts want a much thicker, richer set of values, for our public and our private lives. Our society is lacking a substantial and widely shared moral vision. I believe that secular humanists and Christian humanists could be allies in the task of moving our society away from the rampant individualism that now dominates our life. Of course there will be disagreements when it comes to spelling out in detail what that wider set of values consists of and what their policy implications should be—there will probably be some disagreement over the assisted dying Bill—but such is the need of society for something better than we have now, those disagreements are worth facing and working through.

So I warmly welcome the contribution that secular humanism has made to our society, but in no polemical spirit I will ask this: what is going to sustain, nurture and strengthen its values in the years ahead? Finally, I note the need for a much wider, deeper and richer ethical framework for our society than the current relentless emphasis on free choice provides. I suggest that this is a challenge that secular humanists and Christian humanists might do well to try to meet together.